Collar having thermoplastic &#34;gut&#34; yarn



y 7, 1964 T. D. AINSLIE 3,139,912

COLLAR HAVING THERMOPLASTIC "GUT" YARN Filed March 16, 1962 FIG.'].

INVENTOR Thomas Do inslie ATTORNEY United States Patent 3,139,912 CULLAR HAVING THERMOPLASTIC GUT YARN Thomas Dow Ainslie, Metuchen, N.J., assignor to Phillips-Van Heusen Corporation, New York, N.Y., a

corporation of New York Filed Mar. 16, 1962, Ser. No. 180,204 2 Claims. (Cl. 139-3855) This invention relates to a method of making fabrics and garments, such as collars, embodying a gut yarn which is deformable by heat or by a solvent to stiffen the fabric at selected areas, and to particularly multiply fabrics and garments made in accordance with such method. This application is a continuation-in-part of my co-pending application Serial No. 755,007, filed August 14, 1958.

For the purpose of illustration, but without limiting the invention thereto, the invention has been described herein as being applied to a folded-over cotton collar embodying cellulose acetate yarns as gut yarns and which may be stiffened at selected areas by either heat or a solvent.

Many attempts have been made to produce a collar as stiff, or. nearly as stiff as a conventional starched collar or cotton or linen and having the naturally attractive appearance of the fabric of that type of collar. Thus, collars have been made of Celluloid, finished with an imitation fabric surface or have been made with a surface coated with Celluloid or a lacquer, and have been stiffened at the wings or in the tip area by the insertion of stiffening stays of metal, Celluloid, nylon or other synthetic materials either permanently or reinserted for each wearing. Collars embodying Celluloid or similar materials have always proved unsatisfactory because they present an unnatural appearance. The insertion of stays adds to the production expense, and metal and Celluloid stays have proved to be hard on the clothes in laundering.

Nylon stays have been found to warp and shrink in laundering and are required to be so thick as to present an unsightly bulge or wrinkle in the overlying fabric.

Special weaves of textiles have provided more or less satisfactory folding lines in collars and cuffs, but have failed to solve the problem of providing sastisfactory wings on a folded collar or on an unfolded collar. But all of these procedures attempting to result in a satisfactory appearance of the collar have proved expensive and unsatisfactory.

It is therefore one of the objects of the present invention to provide a textile collar presenting a conventional form or pattern of textile surface, and one which retains its stiffness while worn, and during laundering. Another object of the invention is to provide a stiff collar from a fabric which is weavable on a conventional loom and may be permanently shaped and stiffened after weaving.

Another object of the invention is to provide a woven fabric carrying concealed material adapted to be altered to stiffen the fabric so as to locally stiffen desired areas.

Another object of the invention is to provide a woven fabric carrying concealed woven-in yarns adapted to be altered to stiffen the fabric to different degrees in different areas, and to provide a woven fabric collar presenting a uniform conventional fabric pattern for carrying the concealed yarns.

Still another object of the invention is to provide a collar which may include a stiffened body, an unstiffened fold line and stiffened to an extra stiffness where hitherto a stiffening stay has been used.

Another object of the invention is to provide a procedure for producing stiff collars having a conventional 3,139,912 Patented July 7, 1964 fabric face by weaving a fabric carrying internal concealed yarns adapted to be altered to become stiff in the finished collar by the application of heat.

According to the present invention, the desired effect may be obtained by including in the fabric a special yarn which is either thermoplastic or can be softened temporarily by a solvent, and which after cooling, becomes sufficiently hard and stiff to hold the collar in the desired form and shape, thus giving a permanent set to the collar.

For a collar fabric the most satisfactory special yarn for the stiffening areas of the collar seems to be a gut or stuffer warp lying between a face Warp yarn and a back warp yarn, both of which are engaged with filler or weft yarns.

The amount of set desired may be varied by varying the proportion of gut or other yarns in the fabric being woven, or by the bulk of such yarns. The set may also be varied by the length of time of treatment or the heat applied. The character of the set will also vary with the special yarn used, which may be either thermoplastic, such as cellulose acetate or Dacron (a terephthalic polymer of ethylene glycol) or a cellulose acetate which is both thermoplastic (at lower temperatures) and soluble in several solvents or softenable in them. Of these, acetone is probably the most used commercially,

but cellulose acetate is also soluble in other solvents which are less satisfactory.

The size of the special or gut yarn will vary with the fabric of which it forms a part, but acetate yarn known as 220 denier has proved highly satisfactory as gu warp in two-ply collar fabric with a cotton yarn body. The gut warp yarns are usually alternately stiffening yarns and standard No. 24 single cotton yarns, or alternatively only one stiffening yarn out of every three gut yarns.

Moreover, for some fabrics the gut yarns are made by spinning mixed synthetic fibers and cotton fibers, or are double twisted yarns in which one yarn of the twist is a synthetic yarn and the other a single cotton yarn. Where stiffness is desired in other fabrics parallel constructions are well adapted to provide that stiffness, as in trouser fabrics.

Other features and advantages will hereafter appear. In the accompanying drawing, wherein an illustrative embodiment of the invention is disclosed,

FIG. 1 diagrammatically shows a collar of the invention in face view;

FIG. 2 shows an enlarged section taken along the line 2-2 of FIG. 1;

FIG. 3 is a sectional view taken substantially along the line 33 of FIG. 1 and also along the line 3--3 of FIG. 2;

' FIG. 4 is a sectional view, taken substantially on the line 44 of FIG. 2, looking in the direction of the arrows;

FIG. 5 is a sectional view through the fabric in the folded area, the View being taken substantially on the line 5-5 of FIG. 1, looking in the direction of the arrows;

FIG. 6 is a sectional view taken substantially on the line 6-6 of FIG. 5, looking in the direction of the arrows.

According to the present invention, the collar fabric forming the body of the collar, as distinguished from that which forms the fold area, includes the usual weft filling yarns 10 which are in the front face of the fabric, and in the pattern shown, as seen diagrammatically extending alternately above and below the face warp yarns 13 and 14. The fabric as shown, also includes in this pattern, rear filling weft yarns 15 which extend alternately above and below the rear warp yarns 17 and 18.

The front and rear face fabrics, one of which consists of yarns 10, 13 and 14, and the other composed of the 3 yarns 15, 17 and 18, are held together to form the unitary double-ply fabric by means of binder yarns 19 and 20 which pass over the front filler yarns 10 and under the rear weft yarns 15.

The fabric, in the body area of the collar, also includes a stuffer or gut yarn 21, shown as a warp yarn not engaged by the filling yarns, and suitable to take the form of a thermoplastic yarn or a yarn which is soluble in or which can be softened by a solvent so that it can be treated in the finished fabric to modify the stiffness of the fabric without appreciably affecting the appearance of either face of the fabric. It is found that a gut yarn 21 woven into a fabric may show no change of feel until treated by heat or by such a softening solvent as will yield the desired type of fabric.

For a typical collar fabric the gut warp yarns may be the equivalent of a No. 24 single cotton yarn, say 220 denier, or somewhere between 210 and 240 denier. Often the best results are obtained in gut warp yarns by twisting a standard cotton yarn with an acetate yarn to serve as the gut yarn, although mixed acetate and cotton fibers spun together also yield a highly useful gut yarn for this invention. It is possible to incorporate in the fabric other gut yarns with the thermoplastic or softenable gut yarns as all of the gut yarns, in some instances, need not be of the softenable type.

In making some types of collars, a strip along the long margin of the collar may be free of the softenable gut yarns, thus enabling the collar to be ironed throughout with an iron of the same temperature and leave the unhardenable margin as a soft neckband. In parallel procedure, a strip of the fabric may be woven free of softenable gut yarns, between strips carrying woven-in strips of softenable gut yarn, thus providing the collar with a soft fold line between stiffened strips or extending over other limited areas.

A fabric may be woven with evenly spaced gut warps of softenable stiffening yarn, and a narrow strip may be stiffened by applying a heating iron, heated, preferably, by a high frequency current.

The foregoing description has been largely based on cellulose acetate which is thermoplastic but also soluble, as in acetone, which is also well adapted to serve as a softener to create a gel. The present invention provides a method of stiffening a collar in the area where hitherto inserted stays have been relied upon as shown at 23 in FIG. 1, and the present invention provides wholly concealed deforable means for stiffening a fabric without destroying the details of a standard fabric appearance, and these concealed means are woven in by conventional procedures on a standard loom. In the construction of the body portion of the collar, the binders 19, 20 are on one harness, and the binders all rise and fall together. In the fold line area, half of the binders move with the body binders on the same harness. The other half of the fold line binders move on a second harness. In other words, there are two harnesses, one for all of the body binders and on-half of the fold line binders, and the second harness is for the remaining half of the fold line binders. In each fabric repeat, indicated by the arrows 30 in the body of the cloth, there are two face warps 13 and 14; two back warps 17 and 18, one gut warp 21 and one binder 19 or 20. In the fold area half of the binders 19, for example, are on the first harness and the other half 20, are on the second harness.

The fold line area shown in' FIGS. and 6 is thus free of stiffening if the whole body of the collar is stiffened by heating the area carrying stuffer yarns.

In this area the back warps are designated at 28. Equally, the light fabric edge for stitching the collar to a shirt neckband may be free of the stuffer warps or of the acetate or Dacron warps. There is one warp 28 for approximately every pair of warps 13 and 14, the warps 28 being so arranged that only one of the same is between the warps 19 and 20. The warps 28 interlace with the weft threads 15 as shown in FIG. 7.

Having thus described an embodiment of the invention it is obvious that the same is not to be restricted thereto, but is broad enough to cover all structures and methods coming within the scope of the annexed claims.

It must also be mentioned that in the past it has been customary to take three plies of fabric in making a. fused collar, a face fabric, back fabric, and interlining. The interlining was either coated with thermoplastic resin or woven with a yarn that could be solvent softened and then set by pressing. However, one of the faults with a collar of either type has been ply separation. In my new collar, I eliminate possible separation through the use of binders which tie together the face and back warps. It is this positive control by the binders which prevents blistering or separation of the plies. Thus, the function of this deformable yarn acts primarily as a stiffening agent, and not necessarily as a bonding means. If the soluble gut yarn was completely dissolved, the plies still would not come apart.

What I claim is:

1. In a multi-ply collar fabric comprising a body area and a fold line area, the body area having a front ply comprising face warps and face wefts, a back ply comprising rear warps and rear wefts, the entire area having binder warps connecting the front and back plies, the binder warps being alternatingly engaged with the front and rear wefts to present sections criss-crossing one another in the fold line area in a regular uniform pattern between the plies when viewed across the length of the fabric, each of said binder warps extending around certain wefts in some of the plies, the fold line area having face warps, face wefts, rear warps and rear wefts. there being less rear warps than face warps in the fold line area, gut warps disposed in the body area between the front and back plies thereof, at least some of the gut warps comprising a normally deformable material having a permanent set when subjected to a chemical change, the gut warps being omitted from the part of the fabric which constitutes the fold line area.

2. In a multi-ply collar fabric comprising a body area and a fold line area, each fabric repeat in the body area of the fabric being composed of two face warps engaging with weft threads to form a fabric ply and two back warps engaging with weft threads to form a second fabric ply, one binder warp extending between the weft threads in both plies, and one gut warp between the plies, each fabric repeat in the fold line area of the fabric being composed of front and back plies, the front ply being composed of four warps engaging weft threads, the back ply being composed of two warps engaging weft threads, two binder warps for each repeat and no gut thereads, at least some of the gut threads in the body of the fabric being composed at least in part of a normally deformable material having a permanent set when subjected to a chemical change.

Hanff et al. Apr. 2, 1940 Lawton Nov. 25, 1958 

2. IN A MULTI-PLY COLLAR FABRIC COMPRISING A BODY AREA AND A FOLD LINE AREA, EACH FABRIC REPEAT IN THE BODY AREA OF THE FABRIC BEING COMPOSED OF TWO FACE WARPS ENGAGING WITH WEFT THREADS TO FORM A FABRIC PLY AND TWO BACK WARPS ENGAGING WITH WEFT THREADS TO FORM A SECOND FABRIC PLY, ONE BINDER WARP EXTENDING BETWEEN THE WEFT THREADS IN BOTH PLIES, AND ONE GUT WARP BETWEEN THE PLIES, EACH FABRIC REPEAT IN THE FOLD LINE AREA OF THE FABRIC BEING COMPOSED OF FRONT AND BACK PLIES, THE FRONT PLY BEING COMPOSED OF FOUR WARPS ENGAGING WEFT THREADS, THE BACK PLY BEING COMPOSED OF TWO WARPS ENGAGING WEFT THREADS, TWO BINDER WARPS FOR EACH REPEAT AND NO GUT THREADS, AT LEAST SOME OF THE GUT THREADS IN THE BODY OF THE FABRIC BEING COMPOSED AT LEAST IN PART OF A NORMALLY DEFORMABLE MATERIAL HAVING A PERMANENT SET WHEN SUBJECTED TO A CHEMICAL CHANGE. 